Heirlooms: Vanity Set
by Rae Kelly
Summary: Everything has a story…and so did the antique silver vanity set with the elegant 'C' etched into the back of the mirror. What stories does it tell?
1. Prologue

She looked at the return address on the package and knew immediately what it was

She looked at the return address on the package and knew immediately what it was. The family heirloom had been passed down to the oldest daughter when she gave birth to her first daughter. It had not been used in many, many years but there was something special about having that little bit of family history.

Placing it on the table, she opened the box and carefully took out the packing paper that surrounded the treasure sent to her by her grandmother who had raised her. There amidst the paper and bubble wrap laid an antique silver vanity set. The silver had long since tarnished and the mirror was cracked, but to her it was still beautiful.

Carefully lifting the mirror, she allowed her finger to trace the large, elegant C engraved on the back. The set had first belonged to her great-great-great-grandmother Cosette, given to her by her parents before she married a simple farmer named Pierre. Since then it had been passed from oldest daughter to oldest daughter all who, with the exception of Cosette's daughter, had names that started with the letter C.

As she placed it in the clear box on the mantle where she planned to showcase the set, she suddenly looked forward to the day when she could tell her newborn daughter Carys the story of this precious set.


	2. Cara Faye Lacey

I wanted excitement and adventure and in my mind there was nothing exciting or adventurous about being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher

I wanted excitement and adventure and in my mind there was nothing exciting or adventurous about being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. Besides, there were already plenty of doctors and teachers in my family and being a lawyer was just plain boring. I knew my family expected me to go to college and make something of myself, but I dreamed of being famous. And of course every teenage girl dreams of going to Hollywood or singing on a stage in front of a crowd. What girl didn't want to be Annette with a guy like Frankie at her side? And every girl longed to be as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor or Natalie Wood. And adding to the excitement was the fact that no one in my large family would really approve of any of the things I dreamed of doing.

I was an only child, so I could almost always get away with whatever I wanted. Even if it was something they didn't approve of. Sure, they might protest and even threaten, but in the end they rarely, if ever, did anything. Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents dearly, but they were pretty old fashioned. They weren't too happy that I had convinced some of my cousins to teach me to play the guitar or that we were drinking and smoking regularly. They didn't like the music that we listened to or the concerts that we sometimes traveled several hours to attend. It wasn't that we did things to be rebellious or to upset our parents; we just knew what we liked.

My parents wanted me to go to college, but all I wanted to do was travel and see the world. I didn't want to stay in Brooklyn my whole life or marry the type of young man that they wanted me to marry…I wanted to make my own decisions. So the night after my high school graduation, I slipped down the stairs and out the back door of our little house. I met the boy I had been secretly seeing at the train station and together we headed for California, determined to be the next Frankie and Annette. It wasn't that my parents didn't like the boy; I just never allowed them to meet him. He wasn't the good, clean-cut boy that they wanted for me.

We made it to California, but didn't make it into the movies…we didn't try too hard and there were simply too many other people trying to do the same thing we wanted. After finding menial jobs, we were offered a place to stay by one of his new co-workers. Several people our age were renting a beach house together. Our new home was an exciting place…people coming and going at all hours, and music and parties nearly every night! Things to smoke and drink were always plentiful at these parties and there were several other new experiences to be had. I knew that my great-great-grandparents must be rolling over in their graves at the things I was doing, but I was having the time of my life.

Two years later, the party came to a crashing halt when I realized that I was pregnant…and I wasn't really sure who the father was. Something deep within me knew that everything that I was smoking and drinking as not good for the child within me, so I put that on hold. My housemates encouraged me to have it "taken care of", but I just couldn't bring myself to do that. Not after watching my parents try for years for another baby and listening to my mother sob month after month. I gave birth to a tiny boy that I named Cole, a name I had remembered hearing from somewhere in our family history. After my daughter Cassidy's birth a little more than a year later, I told the doctor to make sure that I wouldn't run into that problem again. Being pregnant meant that I couldn't do all the things that I enjoyed.

I had informed my parents of the births of both of their grandchildren and a few weeks after Cassidy's birth I received a package from my mother. It was that old silver hairbrush and mirror set that Mama had been hanging on to as long as I could remember. As I had no use for the antiques, they got tossed into my closet to be forgotten for another couple of years. When Cass and Cole were almost school aged, someone from the state came and tried to take them away from me. I was told that I had three days to find a relative to take them or the state would come get my children. I'm not sure I slept much that night and the next morning I did the only thing I could think of…I called my daddy and begged him to come get my children. He came out that very day to get them. We both knew it was for the best for them…I was in no shape to be a good parent and my mother would finally have more children to raise. As I was packing up their meager belongings I stumbled across the old vanity set that Mama had sent when Cass was born. The mirror had gotten cracked when I threw it in the closet after I had gotten it, but I knew that Mama would forgive me for that since I was doing the best thing I could for my children in sending them to Brooklyn to live with her. Maybe one day I'll get myself straight and return home for my kids.


	3. Clare Elizabeth Butler

I was still fairly young when the Depression started and the first thing I really remember about it was moving out of our flat and into the building Mama's grandparents had bought

I was still fairly young when the Depression started and the first thing I really remember about it was moving out of our flat and into the building Mama's grandparents had bought. Mama always said that her grandfather was the smartest man she ever knew. A few months before the stock market crashed, he bought an old tenement building and was planning to turn the first floor into a clinic and rent out the flats on the upper floors. The construction on the clinic was just about finished when the stock market crashed and he invited the rest of the family to move into the building rather than renting out the flats to strangers.

My grandmother was the second of fourteen children, so there were lots of cousins to play with. When we tired of playing with one, or had a spat with another, we had plenty more to choose from. It also meant more people to get into trouble with. The top floor was turned into a big playroom and there were also several smaller rooms where the aunts and uncles who were teachers taught us. We had a big kitchen and dining room with several tables because they said it was easier and conserved fuel to cook one big meal instead of several smaller ones. But Papa Daddy, Mama's grandfather, insisted that each family have their own space in the house, so he had all the uncles who worked in construction with Uncle Liam to build living rooms and bedrooms for each family. It was almost like a little house for each family, but without the kitchen.

The Depression didn't really affect us children much. Sure, we wore hand-me-downs that were patched and shoes were worn until they fell apart or grew too small before being handed off to someone else. And often times our presents for birthdays and Christmas were things that had been made by hand, but we never went hungry. We were content in our little world and saw very little outside of it.

I remember Pearl Harbor very well. My brother Geoff was a naval officer and had been stationed in Hawaii. Several of us had gone to see a movie that afternoon and were surprised when the movie stopped suddenly. A man came out and told us the news. Pearl Harbor had been attacked that morning by Japan. We raced home and turned on the radio, sitting there for hours waiting for news. Entire ships had been sunk, some with their crews still aboard. The family waited for days for some news of what had happened to our Geoff, but still none came.

After two weeks I could take no more…I had to do something. With Uncle Johnny's help, I traveled to Hawaii to find my brother. Of course, my parents were against it, but I couldn't let that stop me. I had to find my brother. The problem I hadn't been counting on was the number of unidentified dead and wounded. I volunteered in one of the hospitals in order to be around the men and for the chance that someone would know what happened to my brother. It was like search for that needle in a haystack, but I had to take a chance.

What I did find was my brother's best friend, a young man called Dash. He had lost one arm at the elbow and was blind, though the doctors hoped that it was only temporary. So I did what I did best, I spent most of my off-duty hours sitting beside him, entertaining him. I would read to him, or write letters, or just sit and talk for hours at a time. After a few weeks he told me what happened the morning of the attack…as soon as they realized that the harbor was being attacked all of the sailors were ordered to their battle stations. Geoff and Dash had hurried to their station and only a few seconds later were tossed in opposite directions by an explosion. The last thing Dash remembered was the explosion, but he had been told later that the others were either dead or unaccounted for.

Dash was a recent orphan when he met my brother during their training and the two had become instant friends. Because he had nowhere else to go, I offered to take him to my home when he was released. My family would never forgive me if I had done otherwise and as his sight had yet to return, Dash really didn't have much choice. And there were enough doctors in my family to take good care of him. So together we returned to my Brooklyn home, without my brother or any information on his whereabouts. As I had known they would, my family took Dash in and made him part of the family. On one of our daily walks, he told me that it my family could be a little overwhelming at times, but he loved them all and was glad to be a part of a family again. I had made the right decision in bringing him here.

His sight did return after several months and Dash insisted on taking me out to celebrate. After dinner and a show, he took me to Central Park and we walked through the park in the moonlight. He led me to a bench and had me sit down before kneeling in front of me, asking me to marry him. I quickly and happily agreed…I could think of nothing that I wanted more short of having my brother return home. Because of the war, we decided to have a simple ceremony with only my family present, but even that was a crowd.

Our beautiful daughter was born on August 15, 1945, the day the Japanese surrendered. We named her Cara…after my great-grandfather Charles. My parents came, along with my grandparents and great-grandparents, a few weeks later to give me a gift…a vanity set that had been given to my great-grandmother on her sixteenth birthday. I had grown up admiring the set and was thrilled beyond words to receive such a wonderful gift.


	4. Callie Suzette Wayne

When I was little I didn't have a father, but my Uncle Beau treated me just like he did his own daughter who was two years younger than me. My grandfather (Mama's stepfather) had a daughter that was two years older than me and he too treated me like a daughter. In fact, we adored each other and I looked forward to the days I could spend with my Papa Daddy. To me there was nothing strange at all about my family. Nothing odd about growing up in a shelter for young prostitutes or those who had been abused by the men – fathers, uncles, grandfathers, even brothers – that they should have been able to trust. I grew up in a house full of sisters and I loved every minute of it.

I was fourteen when Wesley moved into our neighborhood and it was instant puppy love. He was a year older, smart, athletic and popular. Many of the neighbor girls swooned over him, but he seemed to single me out. Sometimes I wondered if it was me he liked or the ready supply of treats Mama always had waiting for us.

With my family it wasn't unusual for someone to simply be accepted as family, whether they liked it or not. It didn't happen with everyone, but Wesley was one of those that did. He was taken on fishing trips with Uncle Beau and his twin sons, to baseball games with Uncle Johnny and his ward, and was given a job in Uncle Lee's workshop. My family loved him.

When President Wilson called for troops in the spring of 1917, my Wesley was one of the first to enlist. Several members of his family had been members of the military and he wanted to continue that proud heritage. Both families had long assumed that one day Wesley and I would marry, and we had even talked about it, though there had been nothing official. On the night he enlisted as we took our usual evening stroll through the park, he proposed and we agreed to wait until he returned to marry.

Only a few shorts months later we received word that he had been killed in action. I was devastated and rarely if ever left my room. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep, but Mama had seen it all before, though under much different circumstances. She slowly coaxed me back into the land of the living as carefully, lovingly and patiently as she had coaxed so many other girls over the years.

My mother married a wonderful man when I was eight. He was a police officer and had brought several girls to Mama's little house over the years both before and after they married. It had become his habit to bring his rookie partners home for dinner, and it wasn't any different when he brought Clark Butler home one night nearly two years after Wesley died.

I had given the wedding dress Mama and Mama Nanny had made for me to wear when I married Wesley to my cousin Hannah a few weeks before and was starting to slowly move on with my life. And there was Clark. He later told him that he was smitten from the first time he saw me. I was certain he came to dinner at our house nearly every night because of one of the other girls there, but was I ever surprised to find out that it was actually me he was interested in…and he was more than willing to wait until I was ready to love again.

Eventually I was ready to love again and Clark and I were married in a simple ceremony. We were blessed with three beautiful children: Geoff, Clare and Nolan. Shortly after Clare was born, Mama brought me a gift…the silver vanity set that Mama Nanny had given to her. She fondly reminded me that as a young child I told her that the set was mine because of the beautiful C engraved on the back of the mirror. I had not even considered the old set when I named my daughter, but I knew then that one day it would belong to her.


	5. North Ivy Wayne

My daughter saved my life. I have told many people my story, but very few know just how close I was to ending my own life…I was closer than I would like to admit when I first felt her move within me. After that moment, I just couldn't go through with it.

You see, my father was not exactly the kindest man. One day he threw hot grease at my face because he thought I burnt his food. But it went far beyond that. As my body began developing and even more so after my mother's supposed death, my punishment was to go to the homes of his friends and…entertain them (or their sons) for the night. When I became pregnant he blamed me. Loose was the kindest thing he called me.

Thankfully, he died before my daughter was born and Beau, who he had forced to leave, returned and we packed our belongings, getting as far away from the farm as we could. My little Callie was born on our way to Brooklyn. To this day I'm not sure how we ended up here in Brooklyn, but I am thankful that we did…and that we happened to meet up with the girl Beau later married and her adopted father. I don't even want to begin to think about what would have happened to us without them.

Mr. Cole, or Cap as we called him, took us in and gave us a chance to flourish. It was there that our mother was able to find us through a rather strange series of events. It was there at the house he simply gave to us after my mother's return, that I started on what has become my life's work.

Some friends in the neighborhood had rescued a young girl forced into prostitution by her father. But when she wouldn't eat or sleep, they didn't know what else to do, so I volunteered to take her for a while. It was slow going at first, but I understood what she was feeling…I had been there along with two of my sisters. The first thing she ate was my cookies, lots of them, but as long as she was eating I wasn't going to complain. Slowly, as she began to heal and trust us, she began to eat like a normal child and then slept through the night. It was when I first heard her laugh that I knew that I wanted to help others like her…like me.

On the day that I moved into the small house that my precious stepfather bought, my mother brought me something she had been saving for me for many years...the silver vanity set given to her by her parents. I remembered watching her brush her hair with the beautiful brush as a child. And I had even looked for it after my father claimed that she was dead, but assumed he had sold it. She had taken it with her when she ran from my father, wanting to save it for me. What had I done to deserve such a treasure?


	6. Cosette Aimee Nicolle Benoit

My parents were simple people who ran a small store in rural Louisiana. Mama was a Creole and Papa was a Cajun, both spoke fluent French, which was the only language we spoke at home. The simplest way to explain it would be that Mama's family came here directly from France and Papa's came from France by way of Canada, but that is all ancient history.

I was an only child and about as pampered as the daughter of a small store owner could be. On my sixteenth birthday I was given a vanity set that was real silver! And my parents had even paid someone to engrave an elegant 'C' on the back of the mirror for me. It was the most exquisite thing that I had ever received and I knew that it had cost my parents a great deal of money.

That was also the day I met Pierre, the man I would later marry. He was tall and handsome and charming. Pierre owned a small but prosperous farm about a three hour drive and on the other side of the Mississippi River from our little store. He came back a few days later to speak to my Papa. We were married just a few short weeks after my seventeenth birthday and within a year were the proud parents of a healthy boy we named Pierre Beauregard, but called Beau.

My husband began to change after the birth of our son. He would leave most evenings after dinner and chores, some times stumbling into our house in the wee hours of the morning and at other times returning in time to do chores the next morning. One such occasion was the night our first daughter was born, a year after our son's birth. Pierre stumbled into the room, declared that our daughter's name was North and then passed out on the bed beside me.

Ten months after the birth of Lee, our second son, Pierre disappeared for several days. It was to be the first of many such disappearances. When he finally returned he brought with him a newborn babe, his daughter by another woman. He placed the baby in my arms and said we would be raising her as our own…no one was to know that I had not delivered her. As a trip into town with two toddlers and a lap baby was difficult, I didn't see how this would be a problem. One look at her tiny face and I knew that she was as innocent in this as I was and I couldn't hold it against her. This poor creature was now motherless and it was left up to me to care for her. Carolina Jessamine Wayne would always hold a special place in my heart.

Pierre's drinking got worse with the birth of each of our next three children. Georgia was small and sickly from birth and Johnny, a year younger, had almost passed her in size by the time he was one. Sweet little Louisiana was also born tiny, though not as sickly as her sister. Pierre, who had wanted strong sons to take over his farm, didn't handle to birth of his daughters very well. In fact, the only one he would even hold was his precious Carrie.

My older three were little soldiers and took on more work than children their ages should have, handling most of the farm chores while their father drank away what little profits we did make. Pierre also grew harsher on them when he disciplined them. Instead of his hand, he now used a switch on all three and sometimes even his belt on the two boys, though he never lifted a finger against Carrie. He had even begun to slap me on occasion when he thought I was getting too mouthy. I suppose I could be thankful that he never struck me in front of our children. By the time Beau turned twelve, his back was already scarred from the all too frequent trips to the barn with a father who could never be pleased.

The births of my last two children took a serious toll on my body and by the time baby Ginny was born, North could run the house as well as I could. I hated to turn such a task over to her, but my body seemed to take longer to recover with the birth of each child. Georgia's health was slipping too…faster than any of us liked. One night, with the poor darling struggling to breath, I risked Pierre's wrath to take her into town to the doctor. The doctor said that she needed to be in a dryer climate. I left her with the doctor the next night to discuss the matter with Pierre, only to return home to find that he had told the other children that Georgia was dead. When I told him what the doctor said, he told me that if I took her out West that he would tell them that I had died too…he also threatened to break my jaw if I told them that Georgia was indeed alive. He had broken it once before when I accused him of doing things to our daughters that no father should do.

I was faced with a tough decision. If I sold the few family heirlooms I had left I could afford the journey west for Georgia and myself, but there was no way I could afford to take all of my children. I could stay on the farm with the rest of my children and lose Georgia for sure or I could leave them behind and take a chance to try and save her. The decision to leave them behind is one of the hardest I had ever made. I knew that Beau could take care of the farm and would protect them from their father and keep them together, no matter what it took. North could handle the house and was already mothering the younger ones as much as I was. Johnny was my little fighter and his older brother's almost constant shadow…he would watch out for my little Ana. And the babies were too young for Pierre to bother with.

So I tucked a simple note into the hiding place I had once shown North, packed the heirlooms and went to town. But when it came time to sell them, I just couldn't part with the silver vanity set I had been given so many years before. My dear little North had been heart broken a few years before when I told her that the vase they had just broken was to have been hers one day. No, she deserved this special treasure one day…so I tucked it away with our meager belongings when I whisked Georgia out of town, hoping to one day be reunited with the rest of my children.


End file.
